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It turns out that Wayne was only bluffing with his "nuclear strike" against Mideastia. It's just an unarmed warhead. The hell of it is, it works, and the Mideastian government suddenly starts acting all cooperative-like. They seem to have arrested a Mideastian general named Habib who's been giving Fayed his orders. This is a lucky break for Kiefer and Doyle, who aren't having any success at beating information out of Fayed. CTU stages a fake jailbreak to make Fayed think that he's been rescued by another cell. And then Wayne makes the Mideastians force Habib to call Fayed and tell him to go ahead and rendezvous with his men. This is supposed to lead Kiefer to the bombs, but Nadia detects a duress code in their conversation. It's too late to prevent Fayed from making an actual escape in a stolen garbage truck, but it's just in time to allow Kiefer to stow away in the truck's undercarriage. He follows Fayed to the nukes, kills Fayed's men, and kills Fayed. Nukes secured! Threat over! But all is not quite well -- especially Wayne, who is physically falling apart. Also, Milo is acting like a jealous fifth-grader over the lack of hostility between Nadia and Doyle. And then at the very end, Kiefer gets a cell-phone call from his old friend the Chinese Consulate Cop. He's got Audrey, and she's not dead -- as long as Kiefer does what he's told. What that will be, we won't find out until hour. Looks like we've got a second act. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
We return to the White House Bunker's Battle Bridge, where Wayne's angry insistence on ordering a nuclear sub to launch a missile against Mideastia has caused Tom to wonder if all the artificial adrenalin in Wayne's system is turning him into the protagonist of Crank. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs informs Wayne that the missile is already over Mideastia. Tom urgently expostulates with Wayne about calling off the strike, but Wayne isn't trying to hear it. The Admiral says that it's five minutes to impact, and Wayne tells Tom that they're about to find out just how cooperative the Mideastians can really be. Tom casts a desperate look behind him at Karen, who sneaks off, dialing her cell phone. She's calling hubby to ask him if Fayed has told CTU anything yet. Buchanan has to admit that Kiefer hasn't learned much and isn't optimistic that he's going to. He's shocked when Karen tells him that Wayne has already launched the missile. Still, when Karen asks him to exaggerate how well things are going with Fayed, Buchanan won't do it. "Fayed's not talking and Gredenko's dead," he says, which probably means that Gredenko's not talking either. Well, at least Karen gave it a shot and provided some useful exposition in the process. As she returns to the Battle Bridge, the Admiral reports that they've kicked over quite the Mideastian anthill in terms of air defense. "Then they know we're coming," Wayne says. "Good." As we'll soon learn, that's kind of the whole point. Karen tells Wayne about her conversation with Buchanan and recommends that they hold off. Wayne refuses. Karen asks why he's doing this, but Wayne wasn't kidding when he said he was through talking. The Admiral reports four minutes to impact, about a minute and a half after he said five minutes. Is the missile a bit lost? Wayne's left hand, resting on the conference table, starts shaking. Tom says something to him, and Wayne hides his hand under the table before it can shoot clean off and shatter one of those fancy tactical display screens.
After an awkward pause, the conference phone rings with a call from someone the operator identifies as "the ambassador." Wayne takes the call, and luckily, it's the Mideastian ambassador instead of the Chilean one wanting to bitch about new duties on shiraz or something. Naturally, the Mideastian ambassador is having a whole litter of urbane, Anglo-Indian-accented kittens about what's going on: "For God's sake, I implore you to stop it!" Talking fast, the ambassador starts rattling about "new information." How fortunate that they learned about it just seconds after a nuke headed their way. Specifically, the Mideastian government has already arrested a general named Mohmar Habib, who has been in contact with Fayed. "He's being interrogated as we speak," the ambassador claims. Tom asks whether Habib knows the current location of Fayed's nukes. As we watch that red radar blip approaching land on the digital map, the ambassador says that Habib hasn't been in touch with Fayed since Kiefer crashed the drone into San Francisco a few hours ago. The Admiral cuts in to say that they have two minutes to impact. It's only been seventy-one seconds since he called four minutes to impact, so it sounds like the missile is back on course and making up for lost time. Wayne leans forward in his chair and quietly voices his suspicion that Mideastia has known about Habib all along. The ambassador tries to deny it, but Wayne roid-rages, "Stop lying to me!" and slams his hand on the table. Or maybe that was just an extra-violent tremor. The ambassador makes some lame excuses about the political situation back home. And I suppose it must be bad in his country, if nobody there can even agree on a name for the place. Wayne says, "I really hope protecting this man was worth pushing us to the brink of World War III." He takes his time saying the missile will be aborted. He warns the ambassador to start being a lot more helpful, get his ass to the White House toot sweet, and not plan on leaving until the crisis is over. It's not until Wayne's off the phone that the Admiral relays the abort code down the phone line. "Ditch it in the Gulf," he says. Way to cut it close there.
Tom looks at Wayne with new respect as he realizes that the Mideastians were lying to them all along, and that Wayne knew it. "I suspected," Wayne says modestly. Tom gets up to have someone give the order to recover the warhead (like it's his job, with fifteen high-ranking military officers in the room with him), but Wayne tells him not to bother. The Admiral explains that Wayne had the Vickery launch an unarmed missile. In other words, Wayne was bluffing. Oddly, the Admiral doesn't seem too disappointed about not getting to rain fire and destruction down on thousands of benighted Third-Worlders. Wayne grins that the Veep was right about the Mideastians needing a lot more convincing, but he points out that since he himself is so much more awesome than the Veep, he wasn't about to sacrifice innocent lives to prove it. Wouldn't it have been awesome if the Mideastians had held out and that dud missile had just hit the ground with a dull thud? Then Wayne would have been like, "Okay, time I'm going to be totally serious." He tells his people to relay the new info to CTU and hope it will help them to break Fayed.
As of now, Kiefer's pretty much just breaking Fayed's cheekbones. In a restaurant kitchen, he's once again engaging in his favorite form of fisticuffs, which is the type in which his opponent is tied to a chair. Doyle watches from the sidelines. This method of coercion would probably be more effective if Kiefer were better at hiding how much hand pain this is causing him. You almost expect him to say, "This hurts me more than it does you." He tries talking, telling Fayed that the U.S. is planning to nuke Fayed's people unless Fayed tells him where the bombs are. His face slack, Fayed asks if Kiefer's enjoying himself now as much as he enjoyed killing Fayed's brother. Kiefer says that the two Fayeds have killed thousands of innocent people between them. "Trust me," says Kiefer, "I haven't begun to enjoy myself." Fayed does some more big talking, so Kiefer just punches him in the crotch. Enjoy those seventy-two virgins now, tough guy.
Kiefer goes over to Doyle and quietly admits that this isn't getting him anywhere. Doyle is, of course, itching for a turn of his own, but Kiefer says that would just play into Fayed's hands. Besides, Kiefer's really not about sharing his toys. Buchanan calls to check in, and Kiefer has no good news for him at 10:09:03. Buchanan relays the news of General Habib, but says that it's too soon to tell how far they're going to get on that front, too. "We're going to have to try something more drastic," says Buchanan, and asks how soon Fayed can be ready to move. Kiefer says right now.
It's 10:18:12 as a CTU SWAT van tools along an empty street. From the shotgun seat, Kiefer's on his cell phone with Buchanan, saying that they're about six to eight minutes away from CTU. This despite the fact that it took Doyle almost thirty minutes to get to where they were from CTU last hour. Must have been fighting a nasty headwind. "Tell Agent Burke we're going to need everything he's got," Kiefer says to Buchanan, loud enough for Fayed to hear, even though everything Agent Burke's got isn't worth all that much. From where he's sitting in the back with Fayed, Doyle asks what they'll do if it doesn't work: "I've never found pharmaceutical torture all that effective." Finally, a CTU employee who has the guts to use the dreaded "T-word" out loud. "I have," Kiefer tells the road ahead. Fayed tells them to quit trying to scare him, because he still won't tell them anything. Doyle creeps that at least he'll get to see Fayed suffer.
Kiefer suddenly remembers that it's his turn to be good cop again, so he turns around in his seat to tell Doyle to step off. Doyle points urgently out the windshield, where a gigantic armored car is on a collision course with them. The CTU driver swerves, but the van still clips the other vehicle. Quite a feat, considering that they're the only two vehicles in sight. The CTU van tips over on its side as the armored car screeches to a stop a short distance away. Clearly, this was not an accident (in more ways than one, but we'll get to that in a minute). Kiefer asks if everyone's okay, and Doyle answers in the affirmative. Kiefer watches through the cracked windshield as a small army of swarthy men sporting fatigues and assault rifles -- as well as kaffiyeh-like scarves worn as masks -- start piling out of the armored car to surround them. Kiefer offers to try to cover Doyle while he gets Fayed out of there. He kicks the windshield out and the firefight is on. Kiefer and Doyle manage to take a few bad guys down, but the unnamed CTU agent goes down almost immediately, as unnamed CTU agents so often do. Doyle is quick to follow, and soon even Kiefer is flat on the pavement. Are we supposed to think they're dead? Or that their bulletproof vests protect them from death but not from unconsciousness if struck by a body shot? It actually doesn't matter what we think, though; as we'll soon learn, the important thing is what Fayed thinks, as the gunmen grab him out of the back of the truck and bundle him into the back of their vehicle, yelling in Arabic the whole time. Moments later, the armored car with Fayed inside it is gone, leaving the bodies of Kiefer, Doyle, and an armored CTU agent scattered on the pavement around the wrecked van.
And then a small convoy of other vehicles comes rolling up the road. Kiefer pops up into a sitting position. Aaah! Zombie Kiefer! He yells, "We're clear!" Doyle also gets to his feet, as do the "dead" "bad guys" and the unnamed CTU agent. Actually, I wouldn't have been surprised if that last one had really been dead. You know how they are. As Kiefer walks with Doyle to a fresh vehicle (and do try not to crash this one, boys), he reports over his earpiece that "the cover team just picked Fayed up." So this was all just an elaborate ruse to make Fayed think he was being rescued by people who are on his side. Wherever did Kiefer get that idea? I do have to admit that I'm impressed that they were able to set it all up so quickly during the first commercial break, from loading their weapons with blanks to mustering every single Arabic-speaking member of the U.S. intelligence community. All I accomplished during that time was going to the bathroom. It's 10:20:45 as Kiefer hops into a fancy product-placed pickup truck with Doyle at the wheel.
Meanwhile, back at CTU, Chloe's busy setting up a live video feed from a hidden camera in the armored car. Kiefer looks over at Doyle and notices a trickle of blood on the back of his neck. Doyle figures that he cut himself in the fake car crash. If that's the worst that happened, they were all incredibly lucky. It would have served them right if the crash had ended up killing Fayed. Then Kiefer and the other guys would be like, "Should we skip the fake firefight?" "Nah, let's go ahead. We can use the practice." Nadia asks over the comm. system, "Mike, do you need medical assistance?" Doyle says no, but thanks Nadia for her concern. He manages to make even that sound obnoxious. And of course, we now see Milo quietly go insane. By now, Chloe has finished setting up the AV feed from the armored car, and now both CTU and Kiefer (via a handheld video device) are watching live FayedVision.
The leader of Fayed's fake rescuers, Jamal, introduces himself and claims that General Habib sent them. Suspicious, Fayed asks how they found him. Jamal claims that Habib learned of Fayed's route through a CTU mole, which is of course completely credible. I don't know why Fayed doesn't embrace Jamal and call him brother on the spot. Jamal tells Fayed that Habib wants them all to rendezvous with Fayed's men. Before saying anything else, Fayed asks for a gun. Nobody moves. Fayed makes a grab for the sidearm of the man nearest him, and Jamal softly tells the guy to let Fayed have it. Which can't be protocol, but what else is he going to do? Fayed checks the clip (no blanks in this one), and tucks it into his jacket. Fayed says he wants to talk to Habib himself. Jamal lies that it isn't safe to do so right now, but that Habib promised to call later. He asks Fayed where to go. "I'll let you know when I speak to the general," Fayed says. Jamal doesn't have much choice but to let it go for now.
But behind the scenes, Kiefer is already pressuring Buchanan to have Habib call Jamal. Buchanan's doubtful they can pull it off, but he'll do what he can. "We need to involve the President," he says dramatically, like we don't know who that is. It's 10:22:54.
Commercials. The people trying to act like their minivan is some high-performance sport vehicle aren't convincing me of anything except what losers they are.
10:27:23. Looks like Buchanan was as good as his word, as Tom patches him through on the speakerphone in Wayne's office. Buchanan explains to Wayne that they have Fayed, but that he won't take them to the nukes until he speaks to General Habib. Oddly, Buchanan is speaking really loudly and over-enunciating, like he's talking into a speakerphone instead of the mouthpiece of the headset he's wearing. Or maybe he's now part of the contingent who thinks Wayne's mind is going. Wayne echoes Buchanan's earlier doubts about getting Habib to cooperate, but Buchanan says that Kiefer thinks this is the only way. These are, of course, the magic words. You'd think that after three years of running CTU, Buchanan would hope to have enough credibility of his own not to always have to argue, "Kiefer says so. If you don't believe me, believe the loose-cannon, insubordinate, ex-junkie, PTSD sociopath who, technically speaking, hasn't ever worked for me." After learning from Tom that the Mideastian ambassador has just arrived at the Bunker, Wayne agrees to do what he can, and ends the call with Buchanan. Tom advises Wayne that if their little con isn't working, maybe they need to try "more conventional means." Wayne naturally believes Kiefer's assessment of the situation implicitly, so that's how they'll be proceeding. Then, as he's heading out of the room to go meet the ambassador, Wayne nearly collapses. Tom grabs his arm and asks if he's all right. "No, you ass, I just got blown up five and a half hours ago," Wayne doesn't say. He insists he's fine.
In the Bunker's Lounge -- which I've been mistakenly calling a conference room all this time, oops, how embarrassing -- Wayne tersely greets the ambassador, who has been waiting with Karen. The ambassador is all suave about his Prime Minister's gratitude and relief at Wayne's calling off the earlier strike. Before he can make a polite request to have the U.S. haul its ditched nuke out of Mideastia's waters before all of Mideastia's fish start looking like Blinky Simpson, Wayne grumps that they're not finished yet. "Siddown," he rudely says. The ambassador sits, while Wayne, Tom, and Karen remain standing. Wayne explains the situation to the ambassador, and again we get to hear what we already know, which is that Fayed's waiting to hear from General Habib before he'll lead anyone to the nukes that are in his possession. The ambassador says he's only too glad to relay the request, but warns Wayne that Habib hasn't been too cooperative up until now. Karen advises the ambassador to have his government be "more persuasive." The ambassador wants to assure them that his government is doing everything it can, even going so far as to arrest Habib's family. Hey, that's not cool. "Have you threatened to kill them?" Wayne asks neutrally. Hey! Even less cool! Karen's shocked. Tom's expression is more like, "Too bad he had to ask that." The ambassador is of course all offended that Wayne would dare to suggest such a thing, but Wayne doesn't care. He bitches the ambassador out for a minute, then hands the ambassador a phone and says, "You'll make the call now." The ambassador's expression tells us that he's really wishing he could have been the ambassador to Canada instead. The scene ends before we can witness his further embarrassment at having to ask, "So, do I press 9 for an outside line, or what?"
At 10:31:33, Buchanan tells Nadia that if Habib does call, he won't be speaking English. Nadia offers to set up a separate channel for simultaneous translation. Then she heads over to Milo to ask him to set up the channel for her. At least she knows how to delegate. "I can't, I'm busy," Milo pouts, and tells Nadia to do it herself. She says that she can't do it without the right security clearance. "Hasn't stopped you before now, has it?" Milo grumps, which is probably a reference to how she was using his login ID for half the day, which never really got resolved, did it? Nadia asks him what's wrong. Basically, he's pissed that she was acting all friendly to Doyle earlier over the comm. Nadia plays it off as concern for a field agent. But then she makes it a lot worse by suggesting, "He might not be as bad as you think he is." Because he reads religious texts? I recall Otto in A Fish Called Wanda doing some heavy reading as well. Milo insists that Doyle is every bit the creep he's been acting like, except for that one moment when Doyle covered for Milo without Milo knowing. Nadia is about to give up on Milo and go have Chloe set up the channel instead, but Milo stops her by angrily grabbing her arm. That's the thing about being the grabby guy, Milo -- it stops being charming in a hurry. Or maybe he's just figuring that it worked for Doyle, so he might as well give it a shot. In the background, Morris stands up and leans over the railing to his desk. He softly and politely says, "Psst -- I know it's none of my business, but do we have bit of a problem?" That's the handy thing about his being a British ex-shoe salesman: he can more easily get away with asking someone, "Do I need to put a loafer in your arse? Because I know where to get lots more." Milo releases Nadia, tells Morris no, and mutters that he'll set up Nadia's channel. On her way back to her desk, she passes Morris, who stops her (not by grabbing her arm, though) to ask if she's all right. She says she is. Milo watches the little scene, probably deciding that now he's jealous of Morris as well. They should both stay clear of his reach.
At 10:33:16, Fayed directs the driver of the armored car to pull into a handy parking garage to await Habib's call. Kiefer and Doyle's pickup pulls to a stop one corner behind. Jamal tries again to get Fayed to lead them to his men, but Fayed still refuses. He asks why he's never heard of Jamal or his cell. "This is going south, Jack," Doyle whines to Kiefer, who tells him to be patient. Patient like Kiefer. Jamal gives Fayed the whole spiel about how cells are kept in ignorance of one another to protect themselves and the operation, which Fayed well knows. Jamal's phone rings. He speaks Arabic into it for a moment, then holds it out to Fayed. "The general," he says. I'm impressed that he doesn't seem more surprised. Fayed takes the phone, and he has a conversation in Arabic with his boss back in Mideastia. We see Habib looking beaten and bloody in some Mideastian prison as Nadia simultaneously translates the conversation over the radio for Doyle and Kiefer and CTU. And how awesome would it be if Fayed asked, "Who is that woman speaking?" Instead, he asks if Habib sent the men who rescued him. Habib looks over across the room to where Mideastian soldiers are holding guns to the heads of two boys, presumably Habib's sons. At least they weren't just pulled randomly off the street, because Habib answers Fayed's query in the affirmative. He asks after the status of the nukes. Fayed says he's got two left at a safe house, and when Habib asks why Fayed hasn't used them, Fayed tries to blame Gredenko. Habib isn't buying it. He blames Fayed, and says he should have sent somebody named Samir instead. Then he tells Fayed to meet up with his men and call Habib back for a new target. Fayed acknowledges and hangs up. "Are we good?" Jamal smirks at Fayed. Fayed tells the driver to head east at 10:36:05, and Kiefer and Doyle follow while Buchanan says he'll update Wayne.
If Wayne needs an update on anything, it's his adrenalin dosage. He's fading fast as he sits in the Lounge, while Karen and the Mideastian ambassador pace nervously. Karen notices that Wayne isn't looking his best. Wayne assures her that he's "just a little tired," which would explain why he's holding his head as though it'll roll right off of his neck without a heroic feat of balance on his part. Tom enters with the news that Fayed is currently leading CTU to the nukes. "I'm pleased we were able to help, Mr. President," the ambassador says. Wayne stands and thanks the ambassador, and asks Karen to show him out. The ambassador is surprised, since earlier Wayne asked him to stay until this was resolved, but now Wayne can't get the ambassador out of there fast enough. The ambassador has no sooner left with Karen than Wayne collapses on the floor, telling Tom to lock the door. "No one can know!" he gasps. It's 10:37:32.
10:41:53. Morris reports to Buchanan that the teams shadowing Fayed are all standing by and ready to move in. Buchanan is understandably paranoid about blowing this operation, and tells Morris to make sure all of their teams -- especially the helicopter, duh -- hang back until Kiefer confirms that the bombs are at the safe house. And then Nadia comes over to report that the operation might already be blown. Remember the Samir that Habib mentioned to Fayed? Nadia did a little research and found out that the only Samir close to Habib has been dead for two years. "But the general spoke about him as if he were alive," Buchanan obviouses. Sounds like Habib was giving Fayed a signal that he was speaking under duress. Buchanan says he'll warn Kiefer and Doyle.
A moment later, Buchanan's doing just that, with Nadia chiming in on the call to supply the specifics. Kiefer gets real worried, spends a moment watching FayedVision more closely, and demands Doyle's phone so he can call Jamal. Doyle warns, "If they're wrong, you could blow this." "If they're right, this is already over," Kiefer insists, and calls Jamal.
Jamal's phone rings at 10:43:34. He answers, and Kiefer quickly explains why he thinks Fayed might be on to them. There's no response, though, because the armored car has just entered a traffic tunnel. I suppose it's inevitable that of all the hundreds of cell phone conversations that take place on this show, occasionally one is going to get dropped. About every sixth season, give or take. The even worse news is that FayedVision has gone silent and snowy as well. Things are not looking good for Jamal right now. Monitoring from CTU, Chloe says over the comm. that the tunnel is only 120 yards long, and that the FayedMobile should have come through by now. Kiefer calls in the chopper and tells everyone to move in. He draws and cocks his weapon. As Doyle drives the pickup into the tunnel, they spot the armored car pulled over to one side about halfway through the tunnel. Doyle pulls up behind the armored car, and they approach with guns leveled. The back door is ajar, and everyone inside is dead -- except for Jamal, who nearly is; and Fayed, who is nowhere to be found. So it looks like Nadia's research came about ten seconds too late to do any good. Oh, well, points for trying. As CTUmobiles pull in to block off the north end of the tunnel and Kiefer tries to get the chopper pilot to say whether he saw anything leave, Kiefer spots an access door with a shot-up lock and figures that Fayed went that way for refuge. Hey, it worked for that dog in Independence Day. Kiefer carefully heads through in pursuit.
Kiefer finds himself in some kind of large utility space with pipes and shit everywhere, making for a very suspenseful lack of sightlines as he searches for Fayed. At 10:45:36, Kiefer follows a noise and stays hidden as he sees Fayed stealing a cell phone off the body of a sanitation worker he presumably just took down. Fayed dials the phone and says into it, "It's me. I'm on my way to you now." He climbs into the sanitation worker's garbage truck and starts it up. Still staying out of sight, Kiefer hurriedly creeps up behind the truck. With a grinding of gears, Fayed is on his way -- with Kiefer hanging from the undercarriage, hoping for no speed bumps along the way and wishing Fayed could have instead stolen a truck with a rear deck. As Fayed heads down the road, the camera zooms in to show us that that's really Kiefer under there, illuminated by the nifty ground-effect lighting that of course all city sanitation trucks boast. And then it gets unintentionally hilarious as Kiefer screams into his earpiece at top volume, "BILL, IT'S JACK! DO YOU COPY!!??!" Of course Buchanan copies nothing, because the truck's driveshaft is whirling madly just inches from Kiefer's face. He is so glad he shaved earlier. "DAMMIT!!!" he bellows. Buchanan assigns Morris to analyzing the call, and Chloe to replaying the satellite footage.
Meanwhile, Doyle has either left Jamal to die or is satisfied that he's already dead, because he's followed Kiefer and found Fayed's sanitation-worker victim. He reports back, "I don't have a twenty on Jack, but I do have a dead body at the loading dock." Kiefer continues stowing away at 10:47:24. I spend the commercials reflecting on that episode of CSI about the prison bus with the really gory underside.
10:51:42. In the White House Bunker's Lounge, Dr. Welton is checking the blood pressure of a semi-conscious Wayne. In some kind of misguided solidarity with his jacketless boss, Tom is also in shirtsleeves as he asks the doctor what's wrong with Wayne. The doc has no good news, and yells at Wayne that they're going to Medical. Despite a blood pressure of 80 over 40, Wayne is able to haul himself into a sitting position and refuse to go anywhere. He asks for another adrenalin shot instead. Dr. Welton refuses, saying he shouldn't have even given Wayne the last one. Wayne buttons his collar and says he's going back to work, as Tom and the doctor both beg him to listen. The doctor says that Wayne won't last until the nukes are secured. "I might surprise you," Wayne says as he pulls himself to his feet by grabbing Welton's jacket lapels. So he can totally keep being president, as long as there's always someone standing within towing range every time he wants to stand up. The doctor is ready to resign if Wayne won't go to Medical, but Wayne blows him off, and even Tom won't agree to lean on him any further. As both men put on their suit jackets, Wayne sends Tom to go call CTU for an update. Wayne could maybe make this easier on himself if he holed up in a room that had a phone. Wait, there was a phone in here earlier. Did the Mideastian ambassador use it up or something?
Kiefer's still riding beneath Fayed's stolen garbage truck. He appears to be turning his head back and forth quite rapidly, but that's only because the film is sped up to make the driveshaft in his face look like it's spinning faster than it is. At 10:54:02, Fayed pulls up to a loading dock where his men are waiting. Still bloody and weak, he limps out of the truck and up to his men, explaining that Gredenko betrayed them and led CTU right to him. Speaking of which, Kiefer is quietly (and ironically) letting himself drop to the pavement under the truck. Fayed announces that they're getting the nukes and leaving. "We're going to take out Downtown Los Angeles," he boasts. Which, at 11:00 PM, may kill as many as ten people, counting his own. Fayed leaves one man behind to guard the dock entrance and tells the rest of "you guys" to follow him into the warehouse. And you already know what happens to the guy left behind; you just don't know how. So I'm going to tell you. As he walks along the edge of the dock, Kiefer pops up, brings him down with a karate chop to the ankles, snaps his neck, and rolls him out of sight. Dude, Fayed is so screwed.
Staying out of sight with his single handgun leveled, Kiefer follows Fayed's men deeper into the warehouse. In addition to Fayed, there are, like, five other guys with machine guns, which is really not good odds for them. They go through a chain-link gate into the area where the two remaining nukes are waiting on a table. Kiefer spots them at 10:55:44. Fayed opens a case, looks inside to make sure that the nuke hasn't been replaced with somebody's lunch or something, and closes it, satisfied.
And that's when Kiefer takes his first shot, taking down the first guard. And so begins the second firefight of the hour, but nobody's shooting blanks this time. Least of all Kiefer, who's able to stay behind cover beneath withering machine-gun fire, only occasionally popping out to squeeze off single shots that take Fayed's men down one at a time. Fayed opens one of the nukes to detonate it while Kiefer's still dealing with the last guard, and it looks like Kiefer might have screwed up for the last time. But it's Fayed who screws up, as he turns away from the bomb to start shooting at Kiefer. Kiefer shoots back until he's empty, then discards his weapon and keeps charging Fayed until Fayed's out of ammo as well. And then they engage hand-to-hand, Matrix-style, only without all the fancy choreography and wire-fu. These are two desperate men trying to kill each other with their bare hands. And feet. And knees. They grapple savagely as the soundtrack gets more and more operatic. Kiefer has the upper hand, and then Fayed does, and then while Kiefer's on the floor, he manages to lay his hands on a pipe wrench the size of his leg and swing it at Fayed. He only connects with Fayed's arm, though, and as he gets to his feet for a killing blow to Fayed's head, Fayed ducks underneath it, tackles Kiefer, and decks him. Fayed's barely on his feet himself, but he's doing better than Kiefer, who is now just trying to crawl across the floor to reach a fresh weapon. Fayed rouses himself to go over and deliver a few kicks to Kiefer's prone body as he stands astride him. Suddenly Kiefer finds the strength to roll over, bringing down Fayed in a tangle of legs. And now, somehow Kiefer can stand again. He grabs a length of chain suspended from the ceiling, and is actually able to use it as a shield when Fayed comes up swinging a pipe at him. Finally, he forces Fayed to drop the pipe by wrapping the chain around Fayed's wrist. There's some grabbing and some screaming and some biting and some ow-ow-ow, and then Kiefer head-butts Fayed. Now Kiefer is able to wrap the chain around the neck of his dazed opponent, kick his knees out from under him from behind, and whisper into his ear, "Say hello to your brother." Then he goes over to the lift controller hanging from the ceiling, hits the button, and sinks in exhaustion to the floor as he watches Fayed being lifted off his feet and strangled to death. Dude, that's hardcore.
Kiefer goes all splitscreen as he winces in pain from wounds that will certainly be healed by the beginning of hour, just as the light from a CTU chopper shines through the skylight overhead. In other windows, the CTU office people look stressed out, and Wayne limps around the White House Bunker with Tom prepared to catch him again if need be. Or, since Wayne is about twice Tom's size, it might be more accurate to state that Tom is prepared to watch Wayne fall past him again if need be.
At 10:58:32, Doyle arrives at the warehouse with his weapon drawn and a whole CTU team in tow, which is kind of a waste, since Kiefer didn't leave anyone for them to kill. Seeing that Kiefer's the only one still alive, Doyle holsters his weapon and goes to Kiefer to ask if he's all right. "Yeah," Kiefer pants. Wait for it -- "I'm fine." He asks how Doyle found him, because if he'd known that backup was two minutes away, maybe he wouldn't have taken on Fayed's army single-handed. Oh, who am I kidding? And besides, it's not like a whole CTU team had a great deal of success in Valencia around 10 this morning. Doyle explains that they tracked the sanitation truck by satellite. "The bombs are on the table," Kiefer tells him, and then Doyle gets to be the one to call in to CTU: "The bombs are secure. And Jack's all right. Repeat, the bombs are secure." Everyone back at CTU smiles, because now they can finally go home. Yay! Good season, everyone! Doyle looks around at the bodies littering the scene like the end of a Jacobean revenge tragedy performed by Arabs, and at the particularly macabre spectacle of Fayed's twisted corpse dangling from the ceiling. "Damn, Jack," he breathes. No shit. He helps Kiefer to his feet. Kiefer wants to walk on his own, which is fine with Doyle, since he's getting a call on his cell phone anyway. Kiefer goes and picks up his empty gun from where he dropped it on the floor, like it's the only friend he's got left. And also like it's not about the fifteenth gun he's had today. After he pops the slide and holsters the empty weapon, Doyle says the phone's for him. Nukes secured? Terrorists dead? Threat neutralized? And now a mysterious cell phone call? This absolutely cannot possibly be good.
Kiefer says "hello" a couple of times before a familiar voice says, "Jack? Are you there? Can you hear me?" Kiefer freezes in his tracks, recognizing Audrey's voice. See? Not good. We see Audrey huddled in some dark building, looking like death warmed over as she asks Kiefer to help her. Kiefer asks what's going on, but Audrey has already flinchingly handed the phone back to Kiefer's old friend, the Chinese Consulate Cop. Which I guess I should stop calling him, since after the Consul got killed, he pretty much made Kiefer his full-time job. And now we see that he still hasn't resigned. Some people just hate updating their résumés. The Consulate Cop -- Cheng -- cheerfully tells Kiefer, "Yes, Ms. Raines is alive. If you wish her to remain that way, you will call me back in ten minutes at the 24 fan phone line." Except he gives the actual number. Damn, they're giving those ten digits a workout this season. "If you make any attempt to find our location," Cheng adds, "she dies." He snaps the phone shut. Kiefer barks Cheng's name into the phone a couple of times, but Cheng is gone. It's 11:00:00, and we have seven hours left in the season for him to find and save Audrey. Assuming that's what happens, of course.